Wide open town

It was the dawn of a new day at Dallas City Hall. The city’s freshly minted, first African-American mayor–Ron “the-blame-game-is-over” Kirk–had finally slipped into the lead chair in the city’s council chambers. It was his first day actually running a council meeting–his first real opportunity to seize his electoral mandate…

None of your business?

Last February, Rick Finlan–taxpayer, voter, idealist–tried to go to a meeting about the proposed new sports arena. The early morning get-together was between select city officials and Dallas Mavericks owner Don Carter. It was being held in a conference room in Reunion Arena, and when Finlan walked in about 8:30…

Undue process

The Hon. Thomas G. Jones was angry, though nicely dressed. It was 9:45 a.m. last Friday morning, and I was standing at the service counter of his court in a nondescript strip shopping center in South Oak Cliff, wanting to see some court files; it is the sort of mundane…

The Kirk connection

It was a beautiful afternoon, one week before the Dallas mayor’s race, and Ron Kirk was in the unusual position of having 45 minutes to kill. Political candidates in the home stretch of the fight do not have lives, let alone free time. But Kirk had just emerged from a…

Who ya gonna call?

Mike Marcotte is a very busy man. This was especially obvious on the afternoon of December 9, a day when I was having absolutely no luck getting in touch with him. Marcotte works for the city of Dallas. Once the virtually anonymous director of the Dallas Water Utilities department, Marcotte…

Desperate dealing

The earth moved at Dallas City Hall last week. But in more ways than you know. On Monday, Dallas lost the race to build an auto racetrack to Fort Worth. Which was a bad thing. On Friday, First Assistant City Manager Cliff Keheley–the City Hall veteran who has orchestrated much…

Blowup in City Hall

Therman Nobles wanted to go home. Instead, he was sitting in the underground parking garage at Dallas City Hall, behind the wheel of tire truck No. 901020, with the engine idling noisily. He sat with his arms cradled around the steering wheel, staring at a set of fire-engine red doors…

Arena stonewalling

Louise and Philip Elam spent the first Valentine’s Day of their 10-month-old marriage poring over yet another daily newspaper story that made their hearts sink. But, friends say, they spent their first Valentine’s Day not at a restaurant, nor with wine and flowers–as newly wedded couples like the Elams usually…

Another view

The unsuspecting members of the Greater Dallas Planning Council had no idea what they were in for. As far as they were concerned, economist Mark Rosentraub was just another distinguished speaker, addressing just another monthly breakfast meeting of the 49-year-old group–one made up of architects, planners, builders, and concerned citizens…

Let them cast ballots

This past Saturday morning, Roland Blumer changed into baggy corduroy pants, a white T-shirt, and an old blue sweater that his wife had bought him at a garage sale a few years back. Then he grabbed an ax and headed out the door to work. Not his work, mind you–the…

How to renovate Reunion

Jack Yardley has been waiting a year for the phone to ring. Three weeks ago, it finally happened. “Bob Stimson called me one day,” says Yardley, referring to the Dallas city councilman from Oak Cliff. “He said, ‘I don’t know how much you know about Reunion Arena, but why can’t…

The racer’s edge

Paul Fielding remembers the moment his antenna rose on this racetrack business. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the end of a long holiday weekend. The Dallas city councilman was at home in North Dallas, dredging leaves out of his swimming pool. He had taken his cordless phone outside and,…

City Hall to trees: Drop dead

Darold Molix is staring at what is commonly referred to as a dead tree. Molix, his head shaking in dismay, runs one finger down a long crack in the tree’s gray bark–the first clue, he says, that this young red oak isn’t alive any more. He points, too, to the…

Mixed memories

The new year is bringing with it happier people–at least the ones who appeared in this column last year are in that condition, for the most part. Minnie Washington, as you may recall, started out 1994 feeling incredibly grateful for having heat in her house. The 62-year-old great-grandmother had spent…

The Arena Papers

Dallas city councilwoman Donna Blumer could tell that her constituents were not happy. For one thing, they wouldn’t break into small discussion groups, which the city staff was asking them to do. For another, they weren’t opening their city-issue manila envelopes, pulling out their city-supplied ballpoint pens and colored 3-by-5…

The scapegoat

Louise Elam sat on the floor next to a copy machine last Thursday morning, trying her best to fish a jammed piece of paper out of a document feeder with a pair of scissors. Elam, her terra cotta-colored pantsuit rumpled after only two hours at work, jabbed at the copier…

Whose city is it, anyway?

Sitting at his modest desk at City Hall last Wednesday, Tracy Pounders couldn’t help but smile as he spoke. It wasn’t the pictures of his six-year-old daughter and two-month-old son that were making him feel warm all over. It wasn’t the compact disc of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that was filling…